Weekly roundup: highlights for the week ending Aug. 13
This is a weekly feature at IR Web Report highlighting articles and commentaries of interest to our readers.
Yahoo! Finance has lost its way
Yahoo! Finance, once the clear leader in finance portals, has been neglected to the point where it is in danger of becoming irrelevant.
Sun CEO's blog now on Yahoo! Finance
SUN Microsystems Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) CEO Jonathan Schwartz is now able to publish from his blog directly to his company’s page on Yahoo! Finance. Here’s a screenshot from Sun’s Yahoo! Finance page showing a link to Schwartz’s most recent blog post about the company changing its ticker symbol yesterday. Click on that link and you [...]
Yahoo! Finance homepage redesigned?
Update: Looks like someone at Yahoo! Finance flicked the switch by mistake, or was doing some early morning testing, because the new design was quickly removed after we wrote this post. The screenshot we took is actually of the “tour” that was provided via a link on the new homepage we saw. By Dominic Jones [...]
Fixing finance calendars with microformats
FINANCIAL event calendars provided by the likes of Thomson Reuters, Zacks, Wall Street Horizon and a bunch of others are broken. They are often incomplete and sometimes just plain wrong. Fixing this mess could save companies a lot of money, improve the flow of information to investors, and help firms meet their fair disclosure obligations. [...]
Shareholder forums vs. board blogs
THE U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s concept for an electronic forum where shareholders can discuss and possibly vote on corporate governance issues is too prescriptive and costly, and will mostly benefit a small group of vendors only. At their roundtable on proxy access in May, the SEC floated the concept of an electronic forum in [...]
My favorite stock research site
THE Company Insight Center on BusinessWeek‘s website has quickly become my favorite company research site. Lots of great information, really good usability for a new site, and I like that it’s backed by Standard & Poor’s data. The site makes Yahoo! Finance seem old, cluttered and dull, and it completely and utterly blows Google Finance [...]
As sell-side declines, go direct on the Web
LAST week’s surprising announcement from Prudential Financial (NYSE: PRU) that is was closing its equity research business and axing more than 400 employees has many wondering what the future has in store for the sell-side. BusinessWeek ran a good article on the subject which noted that while the sell-side’s business model is threatened, demand for [...]
Apple blogged, stock tanks. Wow!
ANYONE who still thinks blogs are irrelevant to what happens on the stock market should read this story. During the middle of the trading day, top blog Engadget posted an item based on what it thought was an internal company email saying Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) was delaying its highly anticipated iPhone and its new operating [...]
Nothing to see, but much to ponder at XTO Energy
AS PART of a continuing theme that many corporate websites are becoming increasingly irrelevant to investors due to poor management and a lack of a clear communication strategy, I offer two screenshots. The first is from the events calendar page on XTO Energy Inc.’s (NYSE:XTO) investor relations website, which is hosted by Thomson Financial on [...]
Google Finance adds company events, news RSS
GOOGLE Finance has just been upgraded in the past few hours to add information on company events like earnings call webcasts and upcoming events that integrate with Google Calendar. The screenshot below shows the new Events module on the Google Finance page for Zimmer Holdings, Inc. By clicking on the webcast links, you can access [...]
Traffic to Thomson IR websites slumps
IN WHAT may be an indication that U.S. IR websites are no longer able to attract and hold the interest of investors, traffic to IR websites hosted by Thomson Financial has slumped to all-time lows, according to the Alexa website information company. Alexa, owned by Amazon.com, measures traffic only of people who have the Alexa [...]
Why blog network’s “open CEO interviews” are a hit
SOME readers might be wondering if I’ve gone completely mad by saying this week’s three-day CEO open interview hosted by blog network Seeking Alpha represents the future of IR. You might be wondering why I am advocating that you put your CEO in front of a group of hardened investors, analysts and finance bloggers — [...]
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